Contacts to New Message in Outlook – how to

I stumbled on a new (to me) and very handy technique yesterday and then forgot how to do it today. If I write it up I’ll remember it.

I have not used shared contacts folders in Outlook before, but a colleague shared a folder containing key personnel involved in a project we are working on, with me.  I usually use distribution lists. OK, I thought, but how do I send a message and add all of them into the ‘To’ box in the most efficient way.

I discovered it in a fairly short time by trial and error, but today I couldn’t remember what the technique was. It is not right-click>create message to all, but that is what I expected would work.

Here it is, after a bit of bumbling around:

1. Select All (I used Ctrl-A in the folder) or multi-select using Ctrl and clicking on each contact you want to include
2. Click on the New Message to Contact button in the toolbar. All of the selected contacts email addresses will be in the To field.